When Naturalness Was Affected (29 October 2014)

Nerval and the Romantic LegacySponsored by Career Development Office; French Studies Program

Presented by Bard Alumna, Cate TalleyThe cult of sincerity and naturalness associated with Rousseau and early Romanticism had radical implications in helping to imagine a democratic, post-Revolutionary French society. But by the 1850s, these values were squarely within the mainstream, both aesthetically and politically. This talk will consider the writer Gérard de Nerval as a critic of this cooptation of Romantic values by a conservative, bourgeois culture, reinterpreting Romanticism's fundamental terms to restore its radical, creative potential.

Reading and/or Rereading Proust (6 November 2013)

A lecture by Antoine CompagnonSponsored by French Studies Program

Antoine Compagnon is the Blanche W. Knopf Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. In 2006, he was elected professor at the prestigious Collège de France (Chair of French Modern & Contemporary Literature: History, Criticism and History). He studies literary representations in three main areas: Renaissance, late 19th and early 20th centuries, theory of literature and history of criticism. Among his many very influential books: Les Antimodernes (2005), Le démon de la théorie (2008), Les cinq paradoxes de la modernité (1990), Proust entre deux siècles (1989), La seconde main ou le travail de la citation (1979)

His latest books, a novel and an essay respectively entitled La classe de rhéto and Un été avec Montaigne, were published in 2012 and 2013.

Massacre, Mardi Gras, and Torture in Early New Orleans (7 March 2013)

Sophie White, University of Notre DameSponsored by Africana Studies Program; Art History Program; Division of Social Studies; French Studies Program; Historical Studies Program; LAIS Program

The earliest known eye-witness account of Mardi Gras in New Orleans depicted a masquerade that took place in 1730. But this description of hedonism and cross-gender disguises was an unexpected twist in a larger narrative. For this episode was immediately preceded by the 1729 uprising in which the Natchez Indians attacked French settlers, stripping, killing, and torturing survivors. And it was followed by the ritual torture and killing in New Orleans of a stripped Natchez woman captive. Most galling for the author of the account was the fact that French survivors had imitated, and even outdone, Indians’ torture methods. This transgression magnified anxieties about the potential for colonists to become indianized as a result of their presence in America. But in interweaving misrule descriptions of stripped, dressed, and disguised bodies, the author signaled that dress could channel Frenchmen’s metamorphosis into Indians, but also reverse such transformations. The key to this conceit lies in interpreting the placement of a topsy-turvy Mardi Gras masquerade in the very middle of massacre, torture and cannibalism.

Sophie Whiteis assistant professor of American Studies and concurrent assistant professor of Africana Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Her book, Wild Frenchmen & Frenchified Indians: Race and Material Culture in Colonial Louisiana, was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2012. Her articles have appeared in journals such as The William and Mary Quarterly, the Journal of Early American History, Winterthur Portfolio, and Gender and History. She was a fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2010–11.

Special 35mm French Film Screening (30 October 2012)

Sponsored by French Studies Program, Film and Electronic Arts Program, Art History Program

Please join us for 35mm screenings of these key works of French Poetic Realism. The rare, imported prints are being shown being shown as part of the course Film Among the Arts (ARTH/FILM 230) and the seriesReinventing Realism: The Films of Jean Grémillon.

Pierre Alferi (13 September 2010)

ConversationPierre Alferi and Eric Trudel, Associate Professor of FrenchOlin 102 Tuesday, September 145:00 p.m.ReadingAlferi reads his work in French, with Bard poets reading translatios in EnglishWeis Cinema, Bertelsmann Campus CenterWednesday, September 156:00 p.m.Films Parlants and CinepoemesAlferi's cinematic work is screened continuouusly. Additional information is provided at the entrance of the exhibition.Center for Curatorial StudiesMonday, September 13-Thursday, September 1610:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m.Pierre Alferi, born in France in 1963, is one of the most innovative French poets alive today. He earned a degree in philosophy at the University of Paris with a thesis on William of Ockham, published in 1989. He is the author of several books of poetry, including Les allures natureless (1991), Le chemin familier du poisson combatif (1992), Kub Or (1994), Sentimentale journee (1997), and La voie des airs (2004). His volumes of essays and novels include Chercher une phrase (1991), Fmn (1994), Le cinema des familles (1999), Les Jumelles (2009), and Apres vous (2010). Alferi nurtures collaboration with other artists and often performs with musicians, painters, and othe rpoets. In 2003, Films parlants et cinepoemes, a DVD collecting his cinematic works, was released. Alferi is well known for his translations of works by Giorgio Agamben, John Donne, and Meyer Schapiro. His work available in English includes Natural Gaits (sun & Moon Press, 1995) and OXO (Burning Deck, 2004), both translated from the French by Cole Swensen. A special issue of the journal SubStance devoted to Alferi's work is set to appear in November.